CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI
PHOTOGRAPHED IN HIS
STUDIO IN MALAKOFF,
PARIS, IN JANUARY 2018BEATING
THE ODDS
PHOTOGRAPHY: MACIEK POZOGA WRITER: AMY SERAFIN‘Where are the cameras?’ I ask Christian Boltanski as
we enter his studio in Malakoff, just outside Paris. He
points out several, all feeding live footage to a grotto
in Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art. In 2009,
David Walsh, the professional gambler, art collector
and founder of the museum (see W*141), agreed to pay
Boltanski a monthly stipend until the end of the artist’s
life for the right to film his studio 24 hours a day for
an ongoing live video piece entitled The Life of C.B.
Walsh wagered that Boltanski would die within
eight years; after that time, Walsh would end up
spending more for the work than it was really worth.
But those eight years have now passed, and the French
sculptor and photographer still shows up on the
feed – sitting at his computer, chewing on an unlit
pipe, mulling over his next work. ‘He would like to see
me die in real time,’ Boltanski says with a chuckle.Mortality has long been a obsession for Boltanski.
And yet, at 73, he’s still going strong, travelling the
world, creating new works and mounting exhibitions.
This spring, the Marian Goodman Gallery hosts his
first solo presentation in London since 2010, with
recent works including the film installations Animitas
and Misterios. In his studio, there are sketches and
models for upcoming museum shows in Shanghai,
Jerusalem, Tokyo, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
‘He is certainly one of the major figures of the
last 50 years,’ says Bernard Blistène, director of the
Centre Pompidou’s Musée National d’Art Moderne
and one of the first curators to give Boltanski his
own show, back in 1984. He says the artist introduced
an emotional dimension to conceptual art at a time
when most others denied it. Since then, Blistène
feels that Boltanski’s work has only grown deeper. »On the eve of his first solo show in London
for eight years, we visit septuagenarian French
artist Christian Boltanski in his studio outside
Paris to discuss mortality, whale sounds and a
wager over death with a Tasmanian devilArt